So… What Do Building Inspectors Actually Do?

Speaker 1: 00:08
Hello and welcome. You’re listening to This Is Surveying, the podcast shining a light on the people, ideas, and stories shaping this incredible profession. I’m Nina Young, founder of Surveyors UK and the Surveying Room, the community bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and making surveying visible. So for now, let’s dive into our latest episode. Today I’m very pleased and excited to have Jack Calverly. Now, Jack is a registered building inspector, or another term for that is a building control surveyor, I understand. But I’ve been looking forward to this session with Jack because I think Jack has a lot of information. He has a lot of expertise and knowledge within building control. And I think we probably will have some humour along the way, but we’ll see. So welcome, Jack.

Speaker: 01:04
Hiya, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 01:06
Yeah, no problem at all. So I think what would be helpful to our listeners is if you can give sort of some brief details about yourself, your background, and sort of where you are today.

Speaker: 01:18
Yeah, so with myself, building control wasn’t necessarily something that I was looking to get into. Originally, I signed up to do the residential surveying degree with Savin. And from starting that, I joined a few of the professional memberships, so CABE, RACS, and CIOB. And I got an email from Cabe about the employment sector, and it said uh building control surveyor positions. So I thought that would tie in well with what we were doing with Sava. And they ended up getting uh employed by LABC as one of the uh trainees in their new program. From then on, I did my level four and level five qualifications and ended up working at the local authority for a number of years and then moved out.

Speaker 1: 02:17
Is that is that on the job? The sorry, the training, the level four, level five. Is that on the job training? Is it what is that? Okay.

Speaker: 02:24
You’ll work for LABC and then you’ll be seconded to a local authority. So I ended up with Sefton, which is literally where I live, which was ideal. So I’d be going out on site, shadowing, and then on eighth Thursday, I’ll be doing me studies and lectures, getting my assignments in.

Speaker 1: 02:47
How long did that take?

Speaker: 02:48
So the initial level four course was around February to October time, and during that period I also registered as a class two building inspector. So we have to do to practice as a registered building inspector, you need to be at a class two A to F. As a class one, you are supervised. So a class two A would be domestic projects up to 7.5 meters. So you talk about your normal houses, uh, new build or extensions, those types. So in that first year, I might actually get my class 2A registration as well.

Speaker 1: 03:36
Right, so that kept you busy then?

Speaker: 03:38
Yeah, it’s one of them. Had the level stick the server and the level four with LEBC and getting me competency in place.

Speaker 1: 03:46
So where where are you now? Are you still at the council or no?

Speaker: 03:49
So I’ve gone to the private sector now, so I cover lots of different areas rather than just your set base, such as Sefton. Obviously, it would be all around Sefton. Where I’m currently working, I get to work Manchester, Liverpool, Southport, Thornby, all over the place.

Speaker 1: 04:10
And this is various.

Speaker: 04:12
This is private properties, housing associations as well, or we get all different types of clients who can work on new build sites, your standard extension. We get a lot of commercial projects as well, flats, different things you can be involved in. And hopefully in the next few months, I’ll be upgrading my competency to be able to work on flats and commercial projects as well.

Speaker 1: 04:35
So on a day-to-day, like for someone listening that knows very little about you know building inspectors, building control surveyors, what is it you actually do?

Speaker: 04:45
So as a registered building inspector or building control surveyor, as most people probably know us, we will basically be assigned a number of projects. We will then do a design stage assessment. So if it’s a small extension or uh a knock-through or something like that, we will then look at the plans, draw-in specification, and then we will check for non-compliances. If there are any non-compliances, we will then raise comments for the principal designer who will then have the opportunity to come back and amend the plans or send over updated plans, and we will then be able to check them. Following that, when it comes to site inspections, we’ll come out at certain stages. So excavations of foundations, we’ll go out, we’ll check the ground, we’ll check the size and widths of the excavations, we’ll then do like sort of oversight. So if there’s a ground bearing floor slab, we’ll check what the whole build-up’s going to be. Pre-plaster, again, we’ll be walking through the whole different stages and then we’ll come back out for completion.

Speaker 1: 05:56
And there’s some of the things that I think we’ve talked about before, and that was something I I I wrote down, was around that building control surveyors, inspectors, they they don’t tell you what to do.

Speaker: 06:09
No, so back in the day, probably before my time, I think building control was more so a collaboration. Where if contractors were a bit stuck or didn’t know what to do, they would be asking the building control surveyor, okay, how can I do this to get it to comply, or what do we need to do here? Where that really isn’t the role of a registered building inspect to be telling the principal contractor or a principal designer how they should be doing the works to achieve compliance. It’s for us to inspect the works and ensure compliance. So we can’t sort of say do this, do that, because then we are then becoming the designer, which is not what our role is. Yeah, we need to remain impartial. If we were to say do it that way, we wouldn’t then be impartial to it. We couldn’t say, Well, it is that’s right, because that’s what I’ve said. Where if the designer proposed or the contractor, we can then check it for compliance. So yeah, we we need to make sure we stay between the lines, we can’t sort of go over because it’s a a compliance role, isn’t it? We are going in there. We’re a regulated profession, we’ve got a title now as registered building inspectors. We are on a register which we can be found on Obliques the Government website. So once we get as a trainee or as a class two or class three surveyor, we will register.

Speaker 1: 07:45
So does that mean that if the if someone had um an issue or they wanted to check you out, there’s is there a public directory where you can look up registered building inspectors and that kind of thing?

Speaker: 07:54
It is on the Gov website. You can actually put in the building inspector name or the organization. So if I put in Sefton as the organization name, I’d be able to see which inspectors are registered and to what level they’re registered. So if someone was working on a commercial project and they were a trainee, you’d expect some form of supervision being completed.

Speaker 1: 08:18
Okay. So what with regards to other professional bodies, are there other professional bodies that represent build-in inspectors?

Speaker: 08:28
Well, yeah, so there’s a number of different professional memberships, which a lot of billing control surveyors will be involved with. The different memberships that people may look to join. I found CABE to be more beneficial for me. It sort of suits more the role that I’m in as a building control surveyor. They do a lot of webinars and uh CPD, which is beneficial.

Speaker 1: 09:03
So CABE is the Chartered Association of Building Engineers, isn’t it? So you’ve got a lot of building engineers there. So it is that a good fit then? Do you see it as a a a better fit?

Speaker: 09:12
I I’d like I think PERSI suits me better with being with CABE. The CPD is is very relevant to our position and what we do. So yeah, it kind of goes hand in hand, in my view.

Speaker 1: 09:27
What’s your thoughts on do we have sort of in in certain as areas of surveying, we don’t have enough people coming into the profession. We’ve got a lot of people retiring. What’s it like within building control and inspectors? Do we have a shortage? You know, what’s your sense of what it’s like?

Speaker: 09:47
I would say there isn’t enough building control surveyors. I think there was a lot of surveyors that left the industry when we started to have to prove our competency, which was either by an exam or a professional interview, which would you’d have to submit portfolio and then be interviewed. A lot of the older surveyors weren’t too keen on doing that, so did end up either maybe would do a different form of surveying or just stopped entirely because we were close to retirement age. There’s now a push to try and get a lot of new surveyors in. LABC have got a lot of training and they’re bringing a lot more cohorts of trainee surveyors, which they’re seconding. I know a lot of the private sector are also bringing in their own trainees now. Again, it can come down to a lot of trainees, but people that are experienced surveyors but haven’t quite got to prove their competency yet. So it puts a lot of strain on registered competent surveyors who are then having to supervise the works of class one trainees. So you could have, say, a council with three surveyors, but only one of them is registered. So they will have to supervise the other two surveyors who are trainees checking their site notes, checking their design stage assessments or plan checks. Because it’s uh restricted to functional activity, so you not anyone can just jump in and start doing the job. You have to be registered to do it.

Speaker 1: 11:30
Okay. What is it you like about what you do? What is it about building control?

Speaker: 11:36
So the main reason for building control, in my view, is keeping people safe in and around buildings. That’s basically in the Building Act, uh, 1984. I believe it’s Section 1B, I think it falls under.

Speaker 1: 11:53
I’ll have to check that. I’ll check that later.

Speaker: 11:55
That’s what sort of that that’s what I like about it is knowing that what we’re doing makes a difference. Because if we were to just not be there, people could build however they wanted and not necessarily build it compliantly. But be able to go out there and check that it’s being done correctly and compliantly satisfies me that what’s being done is the right thing.

Speaker 1: 12:23
Yeah, job satisfaction. Yeah.

Speaker: 12:25
That’s what I enjoy about it, knowing that I’m doing something good.

Speaker 1: 12:30
Yeah, for that’s impacting people’s lives down the line at the end of the day. Yeah, so on the other side then, what what do you think the challenges are? What are the some of the biggest challenges within generally, maybe as a day-to-day or generally across, you know, building control?

Speaker: 12:48
Uh recruitment might be a bit of a big one. A lot of people are moving over to principal designer. So they’re starting to work with different firms to do design work and compliance work. So a lot of surveyors are sort of move it while sidestepping.

unknown: 13:09
Right.

Speaker 1: 13:10
So you’re moving, so these are existing sort of building inspectors or building control surveyors that are then moving out across to design?

Speaker: 13:18
Yeah, design compliance rather than the actuals doing the role of a building control surveyor. Okay.

Speaker 1: 13:25
That’s do you know why is that? Why why is that happening? Do you know?

Speaker: 13:29
Um well, I I don’t believe they have to register to do that type of work, and financially it may be maybe better. It’s not something that I’ve got much of an interest in because I enjoy going out on site as well, rather than just sort of design work. I I don’t think that would suit okay.

Speaker 1: 13:53
So it’s more office-based.

Speaker: 13:54
I would imagine so. It would be more so just assisting with architects to get building regulations, compliant specifications drawn up.

Speaker 1: 14:05
So you’ve got people moving across, sort of out from the the compliance checking on site work. What else is it around recruitment or that’s a challenge?

Speaker: 14:16
With a lot of the older generation that come up to retirement, it’s trying to fill that gap where with people leaving. It’s all good bringing in the trainees, but if there’s no one to supervise or no one to sort of learn that experience from, it’s a bit of a difficult transition to bring in a lot of trainees, but then you’re kind of stuck.

Speaker 1: 14:39
Yeah, that do you know that’s the same across so many different types of surveying. It the recruitment is um is a huge pain point because of this, you know. I think the RICS quoted at some point uh last few years the average age of a surveyor was 55. So we’ve got an aging population, lots are coming into retirement or lots are going part-time, but we haven’t still had enough coming through from the career side, whether it be apprentices, whether it be through universities, academia. So it has, I think we’ve got kind of a gap in the middle. I think, and like you say, if there’s less and less people to supervise, which you need with the expertise, you need to be able to cater for other trainees.

Speaker: 15:21
I don’t think it’s marketed very well the professions of surveying in general. In schools, I never heard about surveying. I hadn’t really heard much about building control surveying until much later down the line. You only would really hear about it is if you’re a homeowner and you’re getting work done and the builder says, Oh, you’re gonna need building control to sign this off. But without that, you wouldn’t really know. It’s not which gets a lot of marketing out there, and no one in school goes, Oh, what career would you go for, or what are you interested in doing? No one’s really gonna go, I want to be a building control surveyor, because you might not even know about it.

Speaker 1: 16:04
Yeah, and that’s that’s the same for just being a surveyor full stop, it’s just not talked about. I think there are some discussions around I think um having a built environment, GCSC, which potentially could then incorporate different types of surveying. How long that will take, I don’t know, but I think that’d be a really, really good idea. That’s something that I think that’s been spearheaded by the likes of like the RICS and other other professional bodies. For anyone that’s thinking about being coming into this, what would advice, would you give him any advice? Any tips?

Speaker: 16:41
Well, my brother joined Billing Control last year on the basic of I told him what I was doing, told him how I enjoyed it. The main thing I said to him was don’t try to sort of rush yourself through everything. There’s a lot to learn. There’s yeah, we have the legislation such as the Building Act, we’ll then have the building regulations. If you’re on the private sector, you have the registered building control approvers regulations, then we’ve got approved documents, which goes all the way from A to T. We also have different guidance such as British standards. You’re not gonna learn everything immediately. It’s gonna take time, but you will need to put the effort in. If you’re not willing to put the effort in, it’s not really the sort of job for you. You can’t sort of just sit back and try and roll with it. You’ve got to really have an interest in it. But the harder you try, the better you’ll become. And for me, I want to be good at what I do. You know, it’s it’s one of those you you can’t it’s not a job where you just go, I’ll just sit back and see what happens.

Speaker 1: 18:00
Yeah, so and things change all the time, don’t they? Like standards, regulations.

Speaker: 18:06
You’ve got to be committed. If if that’s what you want to do, you’ve got to be committed. But you will be supported by the right employer if you show that you’re willing.

Speaker 1: 18:17
Have you got CPD requirements?

Speaker: 18:19
If you’re a professional membership, you will have to abide by their rules. I believe CABE is 30 hours CPD. But as we’re a registered profession as well, I believe we also have to prove that we are doing continuous professional development. So we’ll have reviews where we’ll have to provide evidence that we are doing professional development as well.

Speaker 1: 18:48
This is a bit of a it maybe a hard question to answer, but do you know with regards to earnings in this area compared to other types of surveying, where where it sits, is it sort of a good earnings salary levels or in your view?

Speaker: 19:06
So as a trainee that could be around low 20s.

Speaker 1: 19:13
So you’re north you’re northwest, aren’t you? Yeah. North West England. So it could potentially be higher in like London areas and things like that. I don’t know, just because of geographical. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Speaker: 19:22
I believe there is an uplift in that area. So as a trainer, you could be looking around low twenties. Once you start getting your class two registration, local authorities maybe around low thirties. I don’t have a great deal of knowledge on private sector wages. Or I know that they can tend to be higher, can’t they? Yeah, they could be looking at varying for around 40 to 60, but it will all be dependent on experience and which sort of company you go for. Some will have different benefits to others.

Speaker 1: 20:04
Okay. No, that’s interesting to know. So, one of the other things I’d like to ask you about is I believe you are starting a podcast.

Speaker: 20:14
Yes.

Speaker 1: 20:15
So tell us about that. Tell us about your podcast.

Speaker: 20:19
Well, I’m saying the main thing for me with the podcast was with going to side inspections throughout the week, I was looking to sort of find a CPD or a building control sort of podcast or something I could listen to. Sort of build up my technical knowledge a bit more or just listen to different parts. But there wasn’t really anything at all. There’s a few bits from Architects which discuss building regulations, but nothing specifically for building control. So I sort of put on LinkedIn to see if people would be interested. Um got quite a bit of interest and thought, okay, well, let’s just do it then. Because I thought if I don’t do it, someone else probably will, and thought, why not?

Speaker 1: 21:08
Well, it’s great. If there’s no yeah, because I remember you telling me about it and I had a look and I couldn’t see anything else that there is out there. And you have had such a really good response as well. And so what’s it called?

Speaker: 21:19
Uh Behind the Regs.

Speaker 1: 21:21
Yeah, excellent. I think that’s a great name.

Speaker: 21:23
But we great name. We’ve got a lot of people interested in being on. So I’m hoping to get my first few podcast sessions in November with I hope to release it by the end of November and see how we go.

Speaker 1: 21:39
Yeah, that’s great. And where can um people find anything about this podcast? Where’s the best place for them to go at the moment?

Speaker: 21:46
So at the minute I have it just on Spotify, which it is just called Behind Their Eggs.

Speaker 1: 21:53
Am I right in thinking you also set up a LinkedIn, was it a LinkedIn group or something?

Speaker: 21:57
Yeah, so I’ll put the LinkedIn group because It’s not affiliated with where I work. I want it to be completely impartial. I don’t want local authority, Billy Trollpsabayas not want to listen or be part of it because they think it’s just so this is this is from you.

Speaker 1: 22:14
This is coming from you. It’s specifically. Yeah, independent of anyone.

Speaker: 22:17
It will be a mix of people from the private sector, local authority. So I want it to be independent from my own profile, just have its own sort of page. So you know, everyone’s involved, whoever’s involved in billing trolls, it’s for them. So I can talk about everything. The people that are gonna be on, I’m just gonna let them sort of talk out what they want to talk about, and just sort of give them the platform for surveyors to talk about their experience and and their opinions on building control.

Speaker 1: 22:54
Share the knowledge. What is the group called Behind the Regs as well? Or what’s it called on LinkedIn?

Speaker: 23:00
Should be Behind the Regs podcast, I think I’ve got it called.

Speaker 1: 23:04
Behind the Regs podcast. So that’s where people need to go. So if you want to keep up to date with what’s happening with the podcast, you need to go to LinkedIn and get on the Behind the Regs podcast group that Jack has set up. And if anyone wants to connect with Jack, I’m sure he’s open to connecting with people on LinkedIn.

Speaker: 23:23
Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:25
Yeah, they’re open to that. Is there anywhere else that where we’d recommend people, if they want to learn more, you know, about building control uh inspectors? Is there so any particular websites or sources of information?

Speaker: 23:39
You mentioned LABC or Yeah, so LABC, they have their trainee programme. That’s where I first came into it. LABC have their website, I believe they’re hiring trainees currently. There’s also Total Train Development. So if Total Training and Development also offer billing control courses, I think they do level four, level five, and level six. CABE, they do a lot of different CPD or different courses as well. So there’s lots of different places to look for it. There’s a lot of private building control companies which may look at bringing trainees in, but again, where I’m at, I’ve not really had to sort of look for that.

Speaker 1: 24:19
Yeah. Is there anything else before we sort of end today that you you’d like to talk about? Anything you’d like to mention or anything in particular?

Speaker: 24:29
I think in respect of billing controls, it’s clients and homeowners. I think some of the things which would be beneficial is for them to also maybe have a listen to the podcast. Because there’s a lot of things that are going to be discussed of what they would necessarily need when they do works on their own home. So say if they’re knocking a wall and putting the steel in, that would need a building control application where you may not know that as a homeowner and you’re guided by a builder, and a builder may not say you need it, or say you’re getting a re-roof, some builders would say, or some roofers would say, Oh no, you don’t need building regulations for that, but but you would do if it’s a renovation of a thermal element, it’ll fall under Regulation 23. So there’s lots of different things where it sort of gets hidden away, but unless you have have that knowledge to know that you need it, you wouldn’t necessarily sort of go to building control.

Speaker 1: 25:42
No, and no, and that makes a lot of sense. And and I think one of the things that I see a lot of is some of these public groups on say the likes of Facebook, like homeowner groups, property groups. And you see this kind of thing where they’ll they’ll share something or they’ll comment on something and they’ll show them what is this? Do I need building regs? And unfortunately, there’s a lot of people that aren’t experts that give their advice and they’re all like throwing in their two pennies worth onto these, onto these things with with the homeowner or the you know, they’re getting an extension done. Or like from other sides of surveying, you know, they’ve got issues, they’ve got damned, this kind of thing. And then and sadly though, they get misinformed and they get the wrong advice. And I don’t think it’s not something I see a lot of is you know, actual expert building control advice. I think it’s difficult with these public forums, they can be really helpful, but at the same time, they can be quite misleading and give people the wrong, the wrong advice.

Speaker: 26:46
Like, I’ve used when I first started out on the start of course, I was a member of a number of different Facebook groups for surveying, and I just struggled with it. It’s a little bit intimidating to sort of put anything out there because you would see some of the comments from some of the surveyors, it would just jump on someone immediately. Someone would have an opinion, some would also go, No, you’re wrong, and it would just be constant arguing. I just thought, Well, do I really want to start getting involved in this? I don’t really wanna be in an industry where your peers are sort of trying to dig you out for making a an assumption on something where which it’s got a single picture, all the makers are comment what they think it could be, but then everyone’s jumping on them and you’re thinking, Wow, that’s not yeah, it’s a difficult it’s a difficult one across social media.

Speaker 1: 27:42
I see that a lot. Even even on the likes of say LinkedIn, you you you see it, and it’s you know, there are surveyors, you know, the there’s obviously the public side, people getting advice about the homes, and you get surveyors that wanna want to share something, they’ve seen it, they’ve seen something like every day is a school day, you’ll see something you’ve never seen before, you’ll want to ask it, you you have an idea what it is, and they’ll put it out there, and then it can be very judgmental. It can be very, you know, you get shot down and people have opinions and and things. And I think, you know, it’s kind of one of the the reasons why, you know, we’re launching the surveying room community, which is a community that is off social media, so it’s not just open to the whole public, so there’s some privacy there, and it’ll be a supportive environment so that we’ll encourage these kind of discussions, but they’re in more a private space, you’re not bombarded with ads and algorithms. But I think to try and encourage those discussions is really important because I think, you know, I’m not going to talk too much about LinkedIn, but when you see other surveyors criticizing other surveyors, one of the things they forget is that this is out in the public domain, and then your potential clients could potentially see what you’re saying. And so there is a tendency to criticize each other but not realising the implications of what that means. And people coming into surveying as a career, do they are they encouraged when they see this kind of dialogue? And it’s it’s yeah, I think it’s one of those things that social media is a double-edged sword, I think. I think it can be has its positives, but it also has its negatives.

Speaker: 29:13
Yeah, well, I whenever I say it, I always think if they are RACS members, is it within the ethics to be sort of digging each other out on social media on those platforms? Because as RACS members, does it not make the RACS look bad when their members are arguing in such a public forum? It doesn’t look good. Like there is one thing to do, like there’s a lad on TikTok, Daniel Knight.

Speaker 1: 29:44
Oh Daniel, yes, yeah, I know Daniel.

Speaker: 29:46
I like his videos, he’s um he’s good to watch. And he did a video about a Japanese knotweed, and then he did an apology video not long after, just because some of the information he wasn’t wasn’t certain on, and not many people would sort of backtrack and put out an apology to say he wasn’t quite right, which is I like that about someone where if you know they’ve done something wrong, he’s addressed it and he said, Well, look, I wasn’t right on this.

Speaker 1: 30:20
A lot of people wouldn’t do that, they’d just No, there needs to be more of that. It’s honesty, it’s transparency, and you know, all we are all professionals, but we’re also all human, and you know, mistakes can be made, and I think you’re right, by correcting it, it’s like saying, Well, that might not be right, and because nobody knows everything all of the time, 100%. So no matter how much like some surveyors have surveying for 30 years, and there’s still things that they don’t know, or there’s still new things that they come in, and it’s kind of encouraging that supportive environment, I guess. But yeah, I think uh that’s been great, Jack. I’ve learned some stuff today about um and also I was I was asking before everybody before this uh session, understanding you know, have being a registered building inspector, because I didn’t know much about that as opposed to a building control surveyor. But they are one of the same thing, I understand. But if you want to be regulated, is that correct? If you’re regulated, you become a registered building inspector, would that be correct?

Speaker: 31:23
As a registered building inspector, it’s it yeah, it’s a perfected a protected title, so no one can just go on a building site and say they’re registered build inspector unless they are actually registered. It’s I believe it’s against the law to call yourself something you’re not in respect to that.

Speaker 1: 31:45
Like And is that is that new? Sorry, Jack, is that relatively new?

Speaker: 31:49
From following the registration, I believe, so yeah. Um it’s like if I said I was a doctor or a policeman. I’m not. So I couldn’t ground arresting people or doing surgeries.

Speaker 1: 32:02
Yeah. Okay, great stuff. I will include links to Jack on LinkedIn, the group for the podcast, behind the regs, so don’t forget everybody. And yeah, thanks for today, Jack. Really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to This Is Surveying. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and supports the work we’re doing to raise awareness of the profession. You can also join the Surveying Room, the free and independent community from Surveyed UK, bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and of course making surveying visible. Just head over to surveyors UK.com to learn more and join today. All the links discussed in today’s episode are included in the show notes.